The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife

V.
THE CASE FOR GERMANY

Having put in the last chapter some of the points which seem to throw the immediate blame of the war on Germany, it would be only fair in the present chapter to show how in the long run and looking to the general European situation to-day as well as to the history of Germany in the past, the war had become inevitable, and in a sense necessary, as a stage in the evolution of European politics.

After the frightful devastation of Germany by the religious dissensions of the early part of the seventeenth century and the Thirty Years War, it fell to Frederick the Great, not only to lay a firm foundation for the Prussian State but to elevate it definitely as a rival to Austria in the leadership of Germany. Thenceforth Prussia grew in power and influence, and became the nucleus of a new Germany. It would almost seem that things could not well have been otherwise. Germany was seeking for a new root from which to grow. Clerical and ultra-Catholic Austria was of no use for this purpose. Bavaria was under the influence of France. Lutheran Prussia attracted the best elements of the Teutonic mind. It seems strange, perhaps, that the sandy wastes of the North-East, and its rather arid, dour population, should have become the centre of growth for the new German nation, considering the latter's possession of its own rich and vital characteristics, and its own fertile and beautiful lands; but so it was. Perhaps the general German folk, with their speculative, easygoing, almost sentimental tendencies, needed this hard nucleus of Prussianism—and its matter-of-fact, organizing type of ability—to crystallize round.

The Napoleonic wars shattered the old order of society, and spread over Europe the seeds of all sorts of new ideas, in the direction of nationality, republicanism, and so forth. Fichte, stirred by Napoleon's victory at Jena (Fichte's birthplace) and the consequent disaster to his own people, wrote his Addresses to the German Nation, pleading eloquently for a "national regeneration." He, like Vom Stein, Treitschke, and many others in their time, came to Berlin and established himself there as in the centre of a new national activity. Vom Stein, about the same time, carried out the magnificent and democratic work by which he established on Napoleonic lines (and much to Napoleon's own chagrin) the outlines of a great and free and federated Germany. Carl von Clausewitz did in the military world much what Stein did in the civil world. He formulated the strategical methods and teachings of Napoleon, and in his book Vom Krieg (published 1832) not only outlined a greater military Germany, but laid the basis, it has been said, of all serious study in the art of war. Vom Stein and Clausewitz died in the same year, 1831. In 1834 Heinrich von Treitschke was born.

The three Hohenzollern kings, all named Frederick William, who reigned from the death of Frederick the Great (1786) to the accession of William I (1861) did not count much personally. The first and third of those mentioned were decidedly weakminded, and the third towards the close of his reign became insane. But the ideas already initiated in Germany continued to expand. The Zollverein was established, the Teutonic Federation became closer, and the lead of Prussia more decided. With the joint efforts of William I and Bismarck the policy became more governmental, more positive, and more deliberate—the policy of consolidation and of aggrandisement; and with this definite programme in view, Bismarck engineered the three wars of 1864, 1866, and 1870, against Denmark, Austria, and France. They all three had the effect of confirming the military power of Prussia. The first war gave her a much desired increase of access to the North Sea; the second led to the treaty with Austria, and ultimately to the formation of the Triple Alliance; the third ended in the definite establishment of the Prussian hegemony, the crowning of William I as Emperor, and the union and consolidation of all the German States under him; but alas! it left a seed of evil in the wresting of Alsace-Lorraine from France. For France never forgave this. Bismarck and Moltke knew she would not forgive, and were sorely tempted to engineer a second war which should utterly disable her; but this war never came off. The seed of Revenge, however, remained with France, and the seed of Fear with Germany; and these two things were destined to lead to a harvest of disaster.

In 1866 Treitschke came to Berlin. Though Saxon by birth, he became ultra-Prussian in sympathy and temperament. Somewhat deaf, and by no means yielding or facile in temper, he was not cut out for a political career. But politics were his interest; his lectures on history were successful at Leipzig and had still more scope at Berlin. He became the strongest of German Unionists, and with a keen but somewhat narrow mind took an absolute pleasure in attacking every movement or body of people that seemed to him in any way to stand in the path of Germany's advancement, or not to assist in her consolidation. Thus he poured out his wrath in turn on Saxony (his own land) and on Hanover, on the Poles, the Socialists, and the Catholics, and ultimately in his later years on Britain.¹³

He conceived, following the lines of the Prussian tradition, that Germany had a great military mission to fulfil. Her immense energy and power, which had bulked so large in the early history of Europe, and which had been so sadly scattered during the religious wars, was now to come to its own again. She was to make for herself a great place in Europe, and to expand in colonies over the world. It was a pleasing and natural ambition, and the expression of it gave a great vogue and popularity to Treitschke's lectures. The idea was enormously reinforced by the cause which I have already mentioned and dwelt upon—the growth of the commercial interest in Germany. From 1870 onwards this growth was huge and phenomenal. In a comparatively short time a whole new social class sprang up in the land, and a whole new public opinion. If expansion from the point of view of Junker ambition had been desirable before, the same from the point of view of the financial and trading classes was doubly so now. If a military irruption into the politics of the world was favoured before, it was clamoured for now when a powerful class had arisen which not only, called the tune but could pay the piper.

Thus by the combination of military and commercial interests and entanglements the web of Destiny was woven and Germany was hurried along a path which—though no definite war was yet in sight—was certain to lead to war. The general military, programme of Treitschke, the conviction that force and force alone could give his country her rightful place in the world, was more and more cordially adopted. In a sense this was a perfectly natural and logical programme, and amid the surrounding European conditions excusable—as I shall point out presently. But before long it became a weird enthusiasm, almost an obsession. It was taken up over the land, and repeated in a thousand books and on as many platforms. One of these propagandists was General von Bernhardi, who entered in more detail into the technical and strategical aspects of the programme. The rude and almost brutal frankness of both writers may be admired; but the want of real depth and breadth of view cannot be concealed and must be deplored. The arguments in favour of force, of unscrupulousness, of terrorism are—especially in Bernhardi¹⁴—casuistical to a degree. They are those of a man who is determined to press his country into war at all costs, and who will use any kind of logic as long as it will lead in his direction. The whole movement—largely made possible by the political ignorance of the mass-people, of which I have spoken in a former chapter—culminated in an extraordinary national fever of ambition; and in the announcement of schemes for the Germanization of the world, almost juvenile in the want of experience and the sense of proportion which they display. It would not be fair to take one writer as conclusive; but as a specimen of the kind of thing we may quote the following extract (given by Mr. H.A.L. Fisher, the Oxford historian, in his able brochure The War: Its Causes and Issues) from the writings of Bronsart von Schellendorf: "Do not let us forget the civilizing task which the decrees of Providence have assigned to us. Just as Prussia was destined to be the nucleus of Germany, so the regenerated Germany shall be the nucleus of a future Empire of the West. And in order that no one shall be left in doubt, we proclaim from henceforth that our continental nation has a right to the sea, not only to the North Sea, but to the Mediterranean and Atlantic. Hence we intend to absorb one after another all the provinces which neighbour on Prussia. We will successively annex Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Northern Switzerland, then Trieste and Venice, finally Northern France from the Sambre to the Loire. This programme we fearlessly pronounce. It is not the work of a madman. The Empire we intend to found will be no Utopia. We have ready to our hands the means of founding it, and no coalition in the world can stop us."

Bronsart von Schellendorf (1832-91) was one of the Prussian Generals who negotiated the surrender of the French at Sedan. He became Chief of the Staff, and War Minister (1883-9), and wrote on Tactics, etc. His above utterance, therefore, cannot be neglected as that of an irresponsible person.

There is, as I have already had occasion to say, a certain easygoing absurdity in the habit we commonly have of talking of nations —"Germany," "France," "England," and so forth—as if they were simple and plainly responsible persons or individuals, when all the time we know perfectly well that they are more like huge whirlpools of humanity caused by the impact and collision of countless and often opposing currents flowing together from various directions. Yet there is this point of incontestable similarity between nations and individual persons, that both occasionally go mad! If Germany was afflicted by a kind of madness or divine dementia previous to the present war, Britain can by no means throw that in her teeth, for Britain certainly went mad over Mafeking; and it was sheer madness that in 1870 threw the people of France and Napoleon III—utterly unready for war as they were, and over a most trifling quarrel—into the arms of Bismarck for the fulfilment of his schemes.

But that some sort of madness did, in consequence of the above-mentioned circumstances, seize the German people shortly before the outbreak of the present war we can hardly doubt, though (remembering the proverb) we must not put the blame for that on her, but on the gods. It was a heady intoxication, caused largely, I believe, by that era of unexampled commercial prosperity following upon a period of great political and military expansion, and confirmed by the direct incitement of the military and political teachers I have mentioned. All these things, acting on a people unskilled in politics—of whom Bernhardi himself says "We are a non-political people"¹⁵—had their natural effect. But it seems part of the irony of fate that at this very juncture Germany should have fallen under the influence of a man who of all the world was perhaps least fitted to guide her steadily through a difficult crisis. "We all know the Kaiser," says Mr. Fisher, "the most amazing and amusing figure on the great stage of politics. The outlines of his character are familiar to everybody, for his whole life is spent in the full glare of publicity. We know his impulsiveness, his naïveté, his heady fits of wild passion, his spacious curiosity and quick grasp of detail, his portentous lack of humour and delicacy, his childish vanity and domineering will. A character so romantic, spontaneous, and robust must always be a favourite with the British people, who, were his lunacies less formidable, would regard him as the most delectable burlesque of the age."

However the British generally may regard him, it is certain that the German nation accepted him as their acclaimed leader. Clever, good-looking, versatile, imperious, fond of the romantic pose, Wilhelm was exactly the hero in shining armour that would capture the enthusiasm of this innocent people. They idolized him. And it is possible that their quick response confirmed him in his rather generous estimate of his own capabilities. He dismissed Bismarck and became his own Foreign Secretary, and entered upon a perilous career as Imperial politician, under the aegis of God and the great tradition of the Hohenzollerns, a career made all the more perilous by his constant change of rôle and his real uncertainty as to his own mind. His "seven thousand speeches and three hundred uniforms" were only the numerous and really emblematic disguises of a character unable to concentrate persistently and effectively on any one settled object. With a kind of theatrical sincerity he made successive public appearances as War Lord or William the Peaceful, as Artist, Poet, Architect, Biblical Critic, Preacher, Commercial Magnate, Generalissimo of land forces and Creator of a World Navy; and with Whitman he might well have said, "I can resist anything better than my own diversity."

If Wilhelm II was popular (as he was) among his own mass-people, it may well be guessed that he was a perfect terror to his own political advisers and generals. Undoubtedly a large share of responsibility for the failure of German diplomacy before the war, and of German strategy during the war, must be laid to the account of his ever-changing plans and ill-judged interferences. It is difficult, indeed, to imagine a character more dangerous as a great nation's leader. But out of dangers great things do often arise. A kind of fatality, as I have said, has enveloped the whole situation, and still leads on to new and pregnant evolutions for the German people and for the whole world. Germany will in the end be justified, but in a way far different from what she imagined.

Up to the period of Germany's rising commercial prosperity Germany and England had been on fairly friendly terms. There was no particular cause of difference between them. But when Commercial and Colonial expansion became a definite and avowed object of the former's policy, she found, whereso she might look, that Britain was there, in the way—"everywhere British colonies, British coaling stations, and floating over a fifth of the globe the British flag." Could anything be more exasperating? And these "absent-minded beggars" the English, without any forethought or science or design, without Prussian organization or Prussian bureaucracy and statecraft, had simply walked into this huge inheritance without knowing what they were doing! It certainly was most provoking. But what England had done why should not Germany do—and do it indeed much better, with due science and method? Britain had shown no scruple in appropriating a fifth part of the globe, and dealing summarily with her opponents, whether savage or civilized; why should Germany show scruple?

And it must be confessed that here Germany had a very good case. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And if Germany, approving Britain's example, could only show herself strong enough to imitate it in actual fact, Britain at least could not blame her. Besides, in her internal industrial development Germany was already showing her equality with England. In her iron and steel manufactures, her agricultural machines, her cutlery, her armament works, her glass works, her aniline dyes, her toys, and her production of a thousand and one articles (like lamps) of household use, she was showing a splendid record—better in some ways than England. For while England was losing ground, Germany was gaining all the time. England was becoming degenerate and lacking in enterprise. The Zeiss glassworks at Jena have now become the centre of the optical-glass industry of the world. Carl Zeiss, the founder, tried hard at one time to get the English glass-makers to turn out a special glass for his purpose, with very high refractive index. They would not trouble about it. Zeiss consequently was forced to take the matter up himself, succeeded at last in getting such glass made in Germany, and "collared" the trade. The same happened in other departments.

A certain amount of friction arose. The Germans at one time, knowing the English reputation for cutlery, marked their knives and razors as "made in Scheffield." The English retaliated in what seemed an insulting way, by marking the Fatherland's goods as "made in Germany." With Germany's success, commercial jealousy between the two nations (founded on the utterly mistaken but popular notion that the financial prosperity of the country you trade with is inimical to your own prosperity) began to increase. On the German side it was somewhat bitter. On the English side, though not so bitter, it was aggravated by the really shameful ignorance prevailing in this country with regard to things German, and the almost entire neglect of the German tongue in our schools and universities and among our literary folk. As an expression (though one hopes exceptional) of commercial jealousy on our side I may quote a passage from a letter from a business friend of mine in Lancashire. He says: "I remember about a fortnight before the war broke out with Germany having a conversation with a business man in Manchester, and he said to me that we most certainly ought to join in with the other nations and sweep the Germans off the face of the earth; I asked him why, and his only answer was, 'Look at the figures of Germany's exports; they are almost as high as ours!' All he had against them was their enterprise—commercial jealousy."

On the other hand, the head of a large warehouse told me only a few days later that when travelling in Germany for his firm some fifteen years ago he had a conversation with a German, in the course of which he (the Englishman) said: "I find your people so obliging and friendly that I think surely whatever little differences there are between us as nations will be dispelled by closer intercourse, and so all danger of war will pass away." "No," replied the German, "you are quite mistaken. You and I are friendly; but that is only as individuals. As nations we shall never rest till we have war. The English nation may well be contented because they have already got all the good things of the Earth—their trade, their ports, their colonies; but Germany will not allow this to go on for ever. She will fight for her rightful position in the world; she will challenge England's mercantile supremacy. She will have to do so, and she will not fail."¹⁶

Thus the plot thickened; the entanglement increased. The Boer War roused ill-feeling between England and Germany. The German Navy Bill followed in 1900, and the Kaiser announced his intention of creating a sea-power the equal of any in the world. Britain of course replied with her Navy Bills; and the two countries were committed to a mad race of armaments. The whole of Europe stood by anxious. Fear and Greed, the two meanest of human passions, ruled everywhere. Fear of a militarist Germany began to loom large upon the more pacific States of Europe. On the other hand, the fatality of Alsace-Lorraine loomed in Germany, full of forebodings of revenge. France had found a friend in Russia—a sinister alliance. Britain, convinced that trouble was at hand, came to an understanding with France in 1904 and with Russia in 1907. The Triple Entente was born as a set-off against the Triple Alliance. The Agadir incident in 1911 betrayed the purely commercial nature of the designs of the four Powers concerned—France, Spain, England, and Germany—and a war over the corpse of Morocco was only narrowly avoided. Germany felt quite naturally that she was the victim of a plot, and thenceforth was alternately convulsed by mad Ambition and haunted by a lurking Terror.

And now we come to the last act of the great drama. So far the relations of Germany with Russia had not been strained. If there was any fear of Russia, it was quite in the background. The Junkers—themselves half Slavs—had supplied a large number of the Russian officials, men like Plehve and Klingenberg; the Russian bureaucracy was founded on and followed the methods of the German. The Japanese War called Russia's attention away to another part of the world, and at the same time exposed her weakness. But if Germany was not troubled about Russia, a different sentiment was growing up in Russia itself. The people there were beginning to hate the official German influence and its hard atmosphere of militarism, so foreign to the Russian mind. They were looking more and more to France. Bismarck had made a great mistake in the Treaty of Berlin—mistake which he afterwards fully recognized and regretted. He had used the treaty to damage and weaken Russia, and had so thrown Russia into the arms of France.

A strange Nemesis was preparing. The programme of German expansion—natural enough in itself, but engineered by Prussia during all this long period with that kind of blind haughtiness and overbearing assurance which indeed is a "tempting of Providence"—had so far not concerned itself much about Muscovite policy; but now there arose a sudden fear of danger in that quarter. Hitherto the main German "objective" had undoubtedly been England and France, Belgium and Holland—the westward movement towards the Atlantic and the great world. But now all unexpectedly, or at any rate with dramatic swiftness, Russia appeared on the scenes, and there was a volte face towards the East. The Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 broke out. Whatever simmerings of hostility there may have been between Germany and Russia before, the relations of the two now became seriously strained. The Balkan League, formed under Russian influence, was nominally directed against Turkey; but it was also a threat to Austria. It provided a powerful backing to the Servian agitation, it was a step towards the dissolution of Austria, and it decisively closed the door on Germany's ambition to reach Salonika and to obtain a direct connection with the Baghdad Railway. Germany and Austria all at once found themselves isolated in the midst of Europe, with Russia, Servia, France, and England hostile on every side. It was indeed a tragic situation, and all the more so when viewed as the sorry outcome and culmination of a hundred years of Prussian diplomacy and statecraft.

Why under these circumstances Austria (with Germany of course behind her) should have dictated most insulting terms to Servia, and then refused to accept Servia's most humble apology, is difficult to understand. The only natural explanation is that the Germanic Powers on the whole thought it best, even as matters stood, to precipitate war; that notwithstanding all the complications, they thought that the long-prepared-for hour had come. The German White Book puts the matter as a mere necessity of self-defence. "Had the Servians been allowed, with the help of Russia and France, to endanger the integrity of the neighbouring Monarchy much longer, the consequence must have been the gradual disruption of Austria and the subjection of the whole Slav world to the Russian sceptre, with the result that the position of the German race in Central Europe would have become untenable"; but it is obvious that this plea is itself untenable, since it makes a quite distant and problematic danger the excuse for a sudden and insulting blow—for a blow, in fact, almost certain to precipitate the danger! How the matter was decided in Berlin we cannot at present tell, or what the motives exactly were. It seems rather probable that the Kaiser threw his weight on the side of peace. The German Executive at any rate saw that the great war they had so long contemplated and so long prepared for was close upon them—only in an unexpected form, hugely complicated and threatening. They must have realized the great danger of the situation, but they very likely may have thought that by another piece of bluff similar to that of 1908-9 they might intimidate Russia a second time; and they believed that Russia was behindhand in her military preparations. They also, it appears, thought that England would not fight, being too much preoccupied with Ireland, India, and other troubles. And so it may have seemed that Now was the psychological moment.

Austria opened with war on Servia (28th of July), and the next day Russia declared a considerable though not complete mobilization. From that moment a general conflagration was practically inevitable. The news of Russia's warlike movement caused a perfect panic in Berlin. The tension of feeling swung round completely for the time being from enmity against England and France to fear of Russia. The final mobilization of the Russian troops (31st of July) was followed by the telegrams between the Kaiser and the Tsar, and by the formal mobilization (really already complete) of the German Army and Navy on the 1st of August. War was declared at Berlin on the 1st of August, and the same or next day the German forces entered Luxemburg. On August 4th they entered Belgium, and war was declared by England against Germany.

* * * * *

Looking back at the history of the whole affair, one seems to see, as I have said, a kind of fatality about it. The great power and vigour of the German peoples, shown by their early history in Europe, had been broken up by the religious and other dissensions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It fell to Prussia to become the centre of organization for a new Germany. The rich human and social material of the German States—their literary, artistic, and scientific culture, their philosophy, their learning—clustered curiously enough round the hard and military nucleus of the North. It was perhaps their instinct and, for the time, their salvation to do so. The new Germany, hemmed in on all sides by foreign Powers, could only see her way to reasonable expansion and recognition, and a field for her latent activities, by the use of force, military force. A long succession of political philosophers drilled this into her. She embarked in small wars and always with success. She became a political unity and a Great Power in Europe. And then came her commercial triumph. Riches beyond all expectation flowed in; and a mercantile class arose in her midst whose ideals of life were of a corresponding character—the ideals of the wealthy shopkeeper. What wonder that, feeling her power, feeling herself more than ever baulked of her rights, she cast her eyes abroad, and coveted the imperial and commercial supremacy of the world?

In this she had the example of Britain before her. Britain had laid land to land and market to market over the globe, and showed no particular scruple in the matter. Why should not Germany do the same? It was true that Britain always carried the Bible with her—but this was mere British cant. Britain carried the Bible in her left hand, but in her right a sword; and when she used the latter she always let the former drop. Germany could do likewise—but without that odious pretence of morality, and those crocodile tears over the unfortunates whom she devoured. It was only a question of Might and Organization and Armament.

So far Germany seems to have had a perfectly good case; and though we in England might not like her ambitions, we could not reasonably find fault with motives so perfectly similar to our own. We might, indeed, make a grievance of the frank brutality displayed in her methods and the defence of them; but then, she might with equal right object to our everlasting pretence of "morality," and our concealment of mercenary and imperial aims under the cloak of virtue and innocence. One really must confess that it is difficult to say which is the worse.

But if the crystallization of Germany round the Prussian nucleus was for the time the source of Germany's success, it is a question whether it is not even now becoming something quite different, and the likely cause of a serious downfall. It would seem hardly probable that the amalgamation between elements so utterly dissimilar can permanently endure. The kindly, studious, sociable, rather naïvely innocent German mass-people dragged by the scruff of the neck into the arena of militarism and world-politics, may for a time have had their heads turned by the exalted position in which they found themselves; but it is not likely that they will continue for long to enjoy the situation. With no great instinct for politics, nor any marked gift of tact and discernment, unsuccessful as a rule as colonists,¹⁷ and with no understanding of how to govern—except on the Prussian lines, which are every day becoming more obsolete and less adapted to the modern world—the rôle which their empire-building philosophers set out for them is one which they are eminently unfitted to fulfil. It is sad, but we cannot blame them for the defect. They blame the world in general for siding against them in this affair, but do not see that in most cases it has been their own want of perception which has left them on the wrong side of the hedge.

Bismarck, with his "Blood and Iron" policy, made a huge blunder in not perceiving that in the modern world spiritual forces are arising which must for ever discredit the same. He emphasized the blunder by wresting Alsace-Lorraine from France, and again by crippling Russia in the treaty of 1878—thus making enemies where generosity might have brought him friends. The German Executive in July of last year (1914) showed extraordinary want of tact in not seeing that Russia, rebuffed in 1908 over Bosnia and Herzegovina, would never put up with a second insult of the same kind over Servia. The same Government was strangely unable to perceive that whatever it might tactically gain by the invasion and devastation of Belgium would be more than lost by the moral effect of such action on the whole world; and notwithstanding its army of spies, it had not the sense to see that England, whether morally bound to or not, was certain, at all costs, to fight in defence of Belgium's neutrality. So true it is that without the understanding which comes from the heart, all the paraphernalia of science and learning and the material results of organization and discipline are of little good.